Our Little Wonder: Three Years

It's hard to know where to begin when a little life is lived so big that it's just bursting at the seams... 

Moriah is our middle girl, but she loves to live on the edge of extremes. She loves to play at full sound, running, jumping, dancing, giggling, chased and chasing...at the same time she can sit forever playing alone in her room talking softly to Peppa, princesses, baby dolls, or stuffed animals. Her temper can flare with screaming, vein popping, and exasperated sighs, but she's also the most empathetic member of our family. Countless times I've seen her carry the hurts of Felicity and Ephraim as if they were her own. I continue to marvel at where it all comes from and be thankful for the special work God did in creating Moriah Ann...

Moriah makes us a bit crazy at times. When things transition from loud to quiet too fast, you can almost guarantee she's upstairs changing her wardrobe AGAIN. Her favorites are swimsuits, tights, tutu skirts, and princess dresses. She's very independent and does a great job of dressing herself but gets extremely frustrated if things aren't working out and generally leaves a trail of wardrobe changes behind her. She also started waking up in the night again, and I'm not kidding she always wakes up sounding like a horror film. We're working on that. Age three goals. 

On the other hand, MoMo definitely keeps us all laughing. Her crazy, frozen, serious/somewhat disturbed with a bit of silly faces when she hears her favorite songs in the car have us rolling, and she has taken to dancing in a swimsuit on our ottoman every morning. "Mommy, can I have "Lights Shine Bright?" Her moves are a unique slow-Mo arm sequence with intense faces followed by supper fast punching arms. Gets me every time. 

No one will ever forget her grand entrance to the living room at Christmas proudly carrying the removable section of her potty chair and announcing her great accomplishment. She says the funniest things like "Look Mommy, I got screw drivas under my pillow. Wanna see 'em?!" and things we're still trying to undersand like "tamation is yuck. we have to clean it" and "let's go to the chocari baseball game" What is tamation and chocari? No idea, but she sure knows. 

A few other things can't be left out like Moriah's obsession with sweets and impersonations of Elmo and Cookie Monster. Her favorite foods are "Thai" which is anything with rice, chicken and red sauce and Tunisian cous cous. Every once in a while she surprises us with a Tunisian word and still wants a Tunisian story. She's a charmer for sure and seems to have a thing with older men. We are terrified! She adores her classes at church and all of the teachers and little friends that come with them. Chocolate eggs at Easter (almost a year ago), the crazy fireworks we saw on the 4th of July, open gym and Day Camp at Bloomingdale Church all made a lasting impression on her and come up pretty regularly in conversation. All things physical like summersaults and climbing seem to come naturally and without a hint of fear. And we've all fallen in love with the things she says:

tank tang/ chicken
tanakits/gymnastics swimmin' suit
green beams
swimmin' cool
You got armpips?
What you got?
What you say?
mash-a-tabowls/ mashed potatoes
I love you, sweetie.
Oh you so cute!
Oh my crash!
nuggle/granola bar

When I first coined her our Little Wonder, I had no idea how true to her it would be. As we leave year 3, I find myself on the edge of my seat excited and just a little terrified for what's in store for year four. No doubt some crazy, fun, hilarious, times ahead with just the right splash of sweet to keep us all under the spell that is Moriah.

Day Off

Time is passing so quickly that I just know I'm going to wake up one day, and the days of life with little ones will be gone. It's all so very cliche, but I have a strong sense in my heart that these days are sweet, though they are full of what I perceive as chaos and much dying to self. They are worthy of pausing to write down little things like the time we took our day off to head to the zoo on a perfectly sunny, North African day in February.

Dan assured me that it's not the look on his face that's important but the feelings he has on the inside ;) ...

Our little blondie insisted on being held or strolled most of the time, but she couldn't  resist the opportunity to get as close to Aslan as possible. I guess it's a good thing she dressed up for the occasion by stealing her sister's new bows from Auntie Nita and Uncle Adrian...

Other highlights for Felicity were seeing the evil Shere Khan behind bars and feeding the reindeer parsley she got from a friendly zoo-going family. 

Moriah was a perfectly content little kangaroo and loved jibber jabbering with the piglets. My favorite was seeing the pretty pink flamingos up close with their incredibly long necks. 

We marveled at what in the world this creature could be and waited for quite some time for the kids who were running around in it's enclosure to get out of the way so we could take a picture. I'm pretty sure Dan will make fun of me for saying enclosure instead of cage just as he couldn't accept my bleeding heart for the lack of space for some of the animals to run around...it's the American in me, what can I say?

We had to have some serious conversations with Felicity about how jumping fences at a zoo and throwing baguette at every animal is really not a good idea even though it seems everyone is doing it. And it was no surprise that we were asked if Moriah could be in pictures with strangers as they kissed her a million times and declared God's protection over her. 

Felicity was happy to have her sister take the attention away from her so she could eat her 25 cent cotton candy in peace. She surprised us all by choosing blue instead of pink. 

On most days, we are still very much working out our lives as an expat family living in North Africa, but every once in awhile, we have a day that feels kind of "normal". Our Sunday afternoon at the zoo was quite lovely and just what we needed in this wonderful season of crazy. 

Thanksgiving 2014

This one definitely goes down in the books for being unforgettable...

With the help of a neighbor, Dan and Jimmy helped catch and pluck our birds:

TWENTY of our FAVORITE people came from the North to join us for the weekend...

 After hours of being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen...no shame, only joy:

...we pulled off a legit Thanksgiving meal in the middle of nowhere North Africa: 

My friend Anna is so pretty you can't tell she was in the kitchen for hours too :)

... And this meal would not have been possible without our fearless kitchen leader, CHERYL, her sidekick, Kali, and our friends from America who brought us things like cranberry, crunchy onions, sweet potatoes, decorations etc., etc.,...Thank you!!! Yum, Yum! We love you!

We may have even started a new tradition: Passing the turkey leg around the table so everyone can have a bite?...

Dan and friends led us in giving thanks to God for all of his good and perfect gifts: 

...And to top it off a desert excursion opportunity was included...

...as well as a surprise diaper shower...really so surprised...thank you, friends!...

 ...and the birthday celebration of one sweet little girl: 

 As always the Baileys left Thanksgiving stuffed to the brim...full of yummy food and the love of good friends and family and grateful to God for it all.

February Fun Day

One of our New Year's goals is to do one fun thing with our family each month. We want to be intentional about discovering this place, building memories as a family, and just having FUN.

In America our fun days were usually spent at a forest preserve, park, or enjoying some yummy food. We're quickly finding out that fun days here have a different feel to them. I still find it hard to believe that just thirty minutes away we can enter a whole new world...well, new to us but ancient, really: 

The remains of a Roman city...

 The temple and aqueducts:

Checking out the Columns:

The Bath House:

Mosaics: 

Amphitheater:

A not-so-ancient donkey:

And Felicity's favorite, spring flowers just right for picking and sniffing:

It's so FUN to be ONE!

A friend of mine warned me to plan ahead for the big ONE. I meant to follow her advice, but true to form, good intentions left me scrambling the week of.Thankfully my mom came to town, and my husband sort of has to do what I want right now because I'm teaching Sunday school for him. ;)

I'm so grateful for all of their help! And as for the one year old, she was of little help as she spent most of the week teething and desperate to be constantly held by moi...it's a good thing she's so cute.

And I forgot to mention our dear friends who say they just happened to be in the neighborhood 30 minutes before the party. Say what they may,  I'm convinced they just know us so well that they knew we would not be ready without their intervention:

For the party we decided on a FELICITY theme because she hasn't developed an affinity for much more than bugs, yogurt drops, iphones, butterflies, daddy's funny faces and mommy, and she certainly does not have a favorite cartoon character at this point. Plus, we like her a lot and knew we would enjoy planning a PaRtY to reflect our little delight.

The decorations were simple enough and inexpensive which is a bonus...

 Initials on the high chair and a felt party hat.

We thought of Felicity's favorite foods, but gave them a grown up twist. She does not eat baby quiches every morning, but eggies are certainly one of her favorites...We also printed a few pics of her eating her favorites to go along with the food...fruit, veggies, eggies, mac & cheese, Fliss mix, and drinks.

 Yum!

 And for the decorations we printed her ONE year pictures and made a collage and a wordle with all of her favorite things.  Dan also made butterflies outlined with lyrics from his song, FELICITY. I love these things because they are not only party decorations but items we will love putting in her room and continue to enjoy.

Thank you Nita and Adrian for arranging it so it all looked much more amazing than anything we would have dreamed up!

We also set out some of Felicity's favorite books...Elmo, Girl Bible, If you Give a Pig a Pancake, etc.

And my very favorite pinterest idea is the line of her little faces. I found a variety of Felicity expressions, cropped them so the picture showed only the face and had kinkos print them in black and white (less than $2 total). We cut out her faces and used scrapbook paper to make party hats. Then we labeled them with Felicity's various nicknames. I simply showed Dan a picture, and said, "What's the first name that comes to mind?" We had Whoozle, Fliss, Crumpy, Felicity, Wootie, Baby Clown, and Flo-Zo. So Fun!

For the favors we gave the kids Fliss Mix and the adults Izzes...

Of course the BEST part about the Felicity theme was Felicity in real time...

Can you tell we are so in love with our little girl. I didn't even tell her daddy to wear pink...

We're not the only ones who love this Whoozle...

We are overwhelmed at God's faithfulness to answer our prayers that Felicity would bring glimmers of happiness to those she meets. Thank you friends and family, near and far, for loving her so well. We are blessed.

Happy FIRST Birthday to YOU, Felicity Renee! We love you!

Epilogue:

Felicity: Really, two iphones? This is the BEST day of my life...

Mommy: Family hugs are the best. I just can't stop smothering these two...

Daddy: Whoozles and their mommy's are WORK. Finally, nap time...